Sony Online Entertainment’s MMORPG Vanguard: Saga of Heroes was generally perceived as a huge letdown when it launched back in early 2007. Even so, that hasn’t kept SOE from trying to work the kinks out for the faithful few that continue to stick with it, as the recent Game Update 6 demonstrates. According to the patch notes, Update 6 includes fixes for over 1000 bugs. Yikes! It’s pretty sad that the game had so many problems this far after launch, but at least SOE is working on them.

In an attempt to try and make things more inviting for new players, a new starting location called the Isle of Dawn has also been included in the update. The Isle of Dawn is for characters level 1-10 and has a few of the more advanced features turned off. It’s rumored that the island will serve as the featured location in an upcoming Vanguard free trial.

Along with the bug fixes and new landmass, changes were also made to character models in an attempt to make them more “capable of looking much more heroic and contain a lot more personality.” The classes themselves have also seen some rebalancing; the damage output of each class was examined and then altered to more closely fit the range they should be in.

What do you think about SOE’s continued support of Vanguard? Is the game a ship that’s long since sunk, or is there a chance they could turn it around?